Are tanks currently too OP?

[Kabooa]

You are confusing the arguments of tanks in PvP games(LoL, DotA, Overwatch etc) with tanks in FFXIV PvP and oddly using FFXIV PvE kits and balance in FFXIV PvP which already has its own kits and balance and is irrelevant to the topic of FFXIV PvE tanks being low impact in FFXIV PvE.

This tangent was originally spawned from "Tanks are the weakest role".

They are not. Objectively speaking, they hold the most combat power of all of them, and the easiest way to illustrate this is by placing them head to head with the other roles.

Call them boring. I won't fight you.

Call them low impact. I disagree, but that's a matter of opinion.

Call them the weakest role? Objectively wrong. The roles in order of weakest to strongest are Ranged, Melee, Healer, Caster, Tank, and caster is only as close as it is because Summoner exists.

[Lyth]

Let's be real. PvP is by and large irrelevant to this discussion, being subject to its own balance and rules. I know you're trying your hardest to win back internet street cred after being stymied at 8 tanks survival challenges being intrinsically more exciting to watch than watching 8 casters debate theoretical atherodynamics with Titan Ex. But OP's claim was that it was grossly unfair that a tank was able to solo a PvE dungeon boss from last expansion. This isn't even a tangent. Your digression does not even obliquely intersect what we were talking about.

[Kabooa]

Let's be real. PvP is by and large irrelevant to this discussion, being subject to its own balance and rules. I know you're trying your hardest to win back internet street cred after being stymied at 8 tanks survival challenges being intrinsically more exciting to watch than watching 8 casters debate theoretical atherodynamics with Titan Ex. But OP's claim was that it was grossly unfair that a tank was able to solo a PvE dungeon boss from last expansion. This isn't even a tangent. Your digression does not even obliquely intersect what we were talking about.

If I cared about winning "street cred" here, I'd just say "Tanks are weak" like everyone else.

I wasn't responding to the OP.

Dungeons are tuned so low that the only time composition matters is in speed runs, and even then you're dropping the healer first and taking double caster.

Edit: Nope, balanced DPS spread. But I can hardly be blamed for not keeping up with those speedrun metas.

[ForteNightshade]

If we translated PVE kits and stats directly into PVP, a Warrior would solo kill 3 DPS without ever being in danger themselves.

Who cares?

This is a discussion pertaining to the PvE aspects of the game. Warrior could be the god king, uber job that's capable of 1v15 in PvP. It's entirely irrelevant because PvE and PvP are balanced differently. In PvE, tanks have the least impact of any other role and contribute the least damage in a relatively optimized setting. This, in turn, makes them the weakest role overall.

Edit: To further define "weakest". Currently, tanks are essentially gimped DPS. Their impact is low because boss design this expansion has drastically reduced dedicated tank damage. Couple this with enmity being essentially non-existent, and movement and positioning primarily automated, the tank's specific role in a given fight is severely impacted. So they have to fall back on their damage to compensate. Except their damage is tuned so low, even a Dancer with Brick will still pull ahead of them. In the past, our lack of CDs forced us to make decisions on what to mitigate, and our damage was high enough we could surpass an underperforming DPS. Nowadays, we exist to take hits and little else. Ironically, the incredible self-healing Warrior and Paladin have hinders the gameplay of actual healers.

They may be able to solo old content or even current dungeons. Other then being a cool novelty, what impact does that have?

[Kabooa]

This, in turn, makes them the weakest role overall.

No, it doesn't.

Power isn't just damage. Power is the combined total of stats and toolkit breadth.

Dealing the least amount of damage makes the role the one that deals the least amount of damage. That's it.

Unless you want to tell me Healers were the weakest role in Heavensward or Stormblood, you may want to reconsider your stance here.

[ForteNightshade]

No, it doesn't.

Power isn't just damage. Power is the combined total of stats and toolkit breadth.

Dealing the least amount of damage makes the role the one that deals the least amount of damage. That's it.

Unless you want to tell me Healers were the weakest role in Heavensward or Stormblood, you may want to reconsider your stance here.

Except I wasn't only talking about power but impact and the overall gameplay of tanks.

Healers had and still have impact, albeit less than before given the current state of things. Not only do they have to heal, but have to plan out said healing in harder content. Compare that to tanks in say, Eden's Promise. They press their Invuln, faceroll every CD they have and press their Invuln again. That and dragging the boss south once is the only impact they have in an eight minute fight beyond being a damage sponge. The OT literally wouldn't have a purpose whatsoever if the boss did tank buster both tanks. It's that lack of impact on a given fight that brings down the role as a whole. And with the low damage, they no longer have even that to fall back on.

[Kabooa]

Except I wasn't only talking about power but impact and the overall gameplay of tanks.

These are not related to a role's strength.

See the problem with your claim?

Up the tank's damage by 10%, Eden's Promise health increases 2%, and what changed, exactly?

Nothing.

You'd still faceroll your cooldowns, you'd still move the boss once south, you'd still kitchen sink the buster.

But hey, at least you're not the "Weakest role in the game" anymore.

[Awha]

Warriors have got nothing on Paladins. Clemency has a cure potency of 1,200 and gives the Paladin 50% of HP restored when used on another party member to boot. It is the "Healers Are Optional" button for a lot of normal content.

Warriors can sustain themselves especially during large pulls without gimping their damage all that much.

[Lyth]

Stronger defensive capabilities are only meaningful if you use them.

Most of the relevant outgoing damage comes in the form of raidwides or avoidable mechanics. You don't need 'tank level defense' to survive these things. This also isn't ARR or Heavensward, where a stray Shadow of Meracydia or Gordian Sniper is going to oneshot a squishy. An untanked boss is more likely to irritate DPS by means of missed positionals than it is to strike fear into your team as it grinds them into fine paste. The main thing that you need 'tank level defense' for is the big red arrow move that shows up every few minutes.

If the entire point of bringing a tank is big red arrow move, then you don't really need a dedicated 'Tank' role. You can turn it into a frontal DPS-subrole which gets to do a defensive quicktime event a la Susano every few minutes. Defensively, gameplay won't change, but offensively, we'll at least be able to make or break dps checks. Right now, tanks might as well just be DPS, but they lack the dps numbers to show for it.

Most tanks and healers are willing to accept more interesting dps-focused gameplay with damage output to match (i.e. close to or on par with DPS) as a substitute for a lack of actual tanking and healing in fight design. The problem is that we've seen a progressive shift from Stormblood onwards to make these roles focus more on "tanking" and "healing" by scuppering our offensive capabilities (if you think we're irritated by these design decisions, have a look at team DoT/GCD cast spam on the next forum over), while simultaneously taking away the sort of tank/healer specific gameplay elements that make us matter. They're accessible, but lack impact.

I think that if you release an interesting melee dps next expansion while going down the current path, you'll see a lot of skilled tanks hopping off the role. You'll still get to do the same thing in raid, except without big red arrow, in exchange for a whole lot more dps. Poor big red arrow. You will be missed.

[Vyrerus]

I've found myself many times this expansion saying to myself about tank gameplay, "At least it's better than ARR PLD... if only a little." Though then again, PLD in ARR at least had to consider the auto attack delay on swords vs. Sword Oath's effect. Maybe putting up its own stoneskin/someone else's during a transition.

I think ARR was where tanks had the least overall power. Their DPS was kinda fat though, with STR accessories or Pentamelds. They've been curbing them since 3.2 DPS wise, and I knew it was only going to get worse over time. I wonder how players would react if they took away tanks' incredible sustaining healing, amped up their DPS, and kind of returned to the 2.0 standard (and said sorry to Warrior as they stripped it of the last of its identity, since sustain was its identity even in 2.0).

As far as the OP goes, I don't think tanks are OP. At least not GNB or DRK. They've got such tame means to keep other people/themselves alive compared to WAR or PLD, that it always feels like a struggle when the healer goes down on something that's current. To me, anyway.